Hunting feral hogs. At night. With drones.

Louisiana engineers build $10,000 see-in-the-dark, pig-hunting plane.

Wild hogs have become a huge problem in places like Louisiana, rooting up fields in their quest for food and generally being extraordinary 200 pound pests. Given their size, smarts, and tenacity, feral hogs can be hard to kill—and that's when you can even find them amid all the vegetation. So how do you deal with the problem? If you're like electrical engineers Cy Brown and James Palmer, you strap a $5,000 thermal imaging camera to a remote-controlled airplane, then fly the thing around farmers' fields on weekend evenings until you spot a hog. Then you shoot it from the ground with a night vision-equipped rifle.

Brown and Palmer call their homemade, pig-hunting drone the Dehogaflier. The drone itself runs around $10,000 with all the gear attached, and it can feed live video to a screen on the ground, where the operator flies the plane with a joystick. It sounds expensive, but it can be far cheaper than hog hunting using other methods. (Hog hunting from helicopters is a realthingyou can do; its practitioners even use industry-specific puns like "Black Hawg Down.")

On this night in late March, the drone looked like a blue UFO overhead, scanning the dark pastures. Within minutes, it picked up a small black form moving across a nearby field. Brown motioned for quiet and told Palmer exactly where to go.

“At about 11 o’clock, from the front of the truck,” he said, eyes fixed on his computer screen.

Palmer, who is an expert marksman, aimed into the pitch dark, using his night-vision scope, and fired once.

In an instant, he had downed a 200-pound wild boar that had been grazing in the fields.

The drone had done its job.

Hunting with the Dehogaflier

Now, you're probably thinking, "Sure, there are safety concerns here, but wouldn't it be way more efficient just to strap the gun to the drone itself? The US Air Force shoots things with drones!" Brown and Palmer actually do much of their research work for the US Air Force—and they have had the same thought. As they told Modern Farmer magazine last month, "It would be so easy to rig it with a gun, it’s trivial. But a lot of people would have no sense of humor whatsoever about that sort of thing."

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...until they cost you several times that amount in damage, to say nothing of time and effort. I know a handful of farmers who invested in older-gen night vision of various sorts because it's actually the cheap option. Put out some bait, drag out the .270 or 30-06, invest in an NV scope and some ammo, and you can almost make a noticeable dent in the population.

I expected a drone with gun attached, but that's got some big drawbacks as mentioned, also it's been done and is a little terrifying. This is good use of existing tech, but mean hunting in that 3rd video, I get that they're a nuisance, but I like quick clean kills, not animals running scared and getting clipped. If you don't have a good clean shot, don't take one. That's just me.

I expected a drone with gun attached, but that's got some big drawbacks as mentioned, also it's been done and is a little terrifying. This is good use of existing tech, but mean hunting in that 3rd video, I get that they're a nuisance, but I like quick clean kills, not animals running scared and getting clipped. If you don't have a good clean shot, don't take one. That's just me.

I would guess that you don't have to put up with or pay for the damage they cause.

Brown said the only other way to increase its efficiency would be to affix a gun directly to the drone (a terrifying thought). “It would be so easy to rig it with a gun, it’s trivial,” he said. “But a lot of people would have no sense of humor whatsoever about that sort of thing.”

I expected a drone with gun attached, but that's got some big drawbacks as mentioned, also it's been done and is a little terrifying. This is good use of existing tech, but mean hunting in that 3rd video, I get that they're a nuisance, but I like quick clean kills, not animals running scared and getting clipped. If you don't have a good clean shot, don't take one. That's just me.

I would guess that you don't have to put up with or pay for the damage they cause.

Wait, am I reading that right? Are you actually arguing against clean kills?

I expected a drone with gun attached, but that's got some big drawbacks as mentioned, also it's been done and is a little terrifying. This is good use of existing tech, but mean hunting in that 3rd video, I get that they're a nuisance, but I like quick clean kills, not animals running scared and getting clipped. If you don't have a good clean shot, don't take one. That's just me.

I would guess that you don't have to put up with or pay for the damage they cause.

Coyotes and prairie dogs are the nuisances that my family deals with in raising cattle and chickens. Cultivated fox and hawk habitat to keep the prairie dog population in check, but they never caused any problems anyway, we've never seen a leg break from a prairie dog hole. Coyotes get a chicken once in a while, but they've got a safe roost, so that's rare, and aren't a huge threat to mature cattle, an orphaned calf is susceptible, but ideally they aren't left out.

Their hog problem seems worse, and I don't have a problem with killing a pest that can't be dealt with otherwise, but if I can't do it cleanly then I won't do it.

Coyotes and prairie dogs are the nuisances that my family deals with in raising cattle and chickens. Cultivated fox and hawk habitat to keep the prairie dog population in check, but they never caused any problems anyway, we've never seen a leg break from a prairie dog hole. Coyotes get a chicken once in a while, but they've got a safe roost, so that's rare, and aren't a huge threat to mature cattle, an orphaned calf is susceptible, but ideally they aren't left out.

Their hog problem seems worse, and I don't have a problem with killing a pest that can't be dealt with otherwise, but if I can't do it cleanly then I won't do it.

What happened to the idea of reintroducing and cultivating black footed ferrets for the prairie dogs anyway? They are sortof the original predator. They may live in burrows, but last I checked they got those burrows by eating the prairie dogs who dug them.

This is good use of existing tech, but mean hunting in that 3rd video, I get that they're a nuisance, but I like quick clean kills, not animals running scared and getting clipped. If you don't have a good clean shot, don't take one. That's just me.

You can trap wild pigs. It is done all the time. The only drawback is the trap has no intelligence, so it can trap other animals.

Now rather than flying a drone to find the pig, a better use of technology would be to make a smart trap that only catches pigs.

Then what the hell do you do with a trapped hog? I'll tell you one thing, i won't get near a trapped hog, he/she will be absolutely furious and if the trap has managed to somewhat injure the hog, even worse.

The hogs are not Bambi. If you trap one, you'll have to kill it to get your trap back. The trap only captures one hog at a time.

I do not like guns in the hands of idiots or psychos but feral hog killing in Texas and Louisiana is legitimate. I doubt that the hunters are making much of a dent in the population. The hogs breed incredibly fast with large litters. Hogs like some of those groups of ten or twelve can tear up acres of planted fields every night. My fear is that they are producing an evolved hog that gets smarter. They hear the helicopter, they find a place to hide.

If hogs 'evolved' to have smaller litters (those with big litters make the species easier to kill), or smaller adults (less noticeable and trackable and ate less), then I think such an 'arms race' is acceptable.

Coyotes and prairie dogs are the nuisances that my family deals with in raising cattle and chickens. Cultivated fox and hawk habitat to keep the prairie dog population in check, but they never caused any problems anyway, we've never seen a leg break from a prairie dog hole. Coyotes get a chicken once in a while, but they've got a safe roost, so that's rare, and aren't a huge threat to mature cattle, an orphaned calf is susceptible, but ideally they aren't left out.

Their hog problem seems worse, and I don't have a problem with killing a pest that can't be dealt with otherwise, but if I can't do it cleanly then I won't do it.

What happened to the idea of reintroducing and cultivating black footed ferrets for the prairie dogs anyway? They are sortof the original predator. They may live in burrows, but last I checked they got those burrows by eating the prairie dogs who dug them.

They definitely feed on prairie dogs, but I don't think I've ever seen one. Not sure if they're making efforts to reintroduce, seems like there's a lot of good land around Colorado where they could try.

These hogs are a real menace. While they average around 200 or so pounds, they can reach excesses of 600+ lbs. They are extremely destructive and hostile and cause tens of millions in property damage yearly. You need high caliber ammunition just to bring them down reliably.

How beefy would your trap have to be to hold them? I would be be willing to wager a capable trap would be far, far more expensive than a good rifle and some ammunition. Also a lot of the time, the slain pigs are not wasted. Many time people bring them to homeless shelters or have them butchered themselves. That is hundreds of pounds of good meat.

As someone who puts a bit of lead downrange occasionally .. moving targets at range are HARD. Getting a repeat shot in there is important. Most of the pulls in that video are on center mass, not headshots, and depending on the caliber they're using, center mass might bleed out the pig but not drop cleanly.

You can trap wild pigs. It is done all the time. The only drawback is the trap has no intelligence, so it can trap other animals.

Now rather than flying a drone to find the pig, a better use of technology would be to make a smart trap that only catches pigs.

I fully agree that's a truly excellent idea.

IR cameras with image recognition, bait, etc.. It's practically low tech by comparison. It's also very easy to rig up such a trap with nitrogen gas (extremely cheap) to kill the pigs 100% painlessly, and with no signs or smells of trauma, you might have them lining up for the chamber, waiting their turn for a chance at the bait, unaware of the switch.

The only reason I see that idea failing is that, as I think is obvious from the vids in this article, these farmers enjoy the sport too much to trade it for boaring traps.